Website Content should be your
#1 priority! Your quest for high placement must start
with a good website. It is important to have a lot of text
describing what you do. Use your keywords in the content,
but don't repeat them over and over. Many search engines rate
sites based on 'keyword density'. This is usually a formula
that looks at META Keywords, words in your TITLE, words in
paragraph text, words in links to other pages, and even words
in the 'ALT' text on your images. They will even look at different
forms of your keywords. For example, if an important keyword
for you is 'FISH', the word 'FISHING' in the body of your
document will raise the confidence in the word 'FISH' on some
engines.

Keep the most important content near the
top of your pages. Some engines will place a higher rating
of importance based on where they find the text in your page.
Closer to the top is usually better.

Links to Other Pages We can't emphasize enough the importance
of links. Both from your page to other pages, and from other
pages to yours.

First consider links on your pages. When
many search engines see them, they consider your site more
'real'. It also gives the search engine spiders a place to
go. Make your links meaningful. Make sure they relate to what
you do (and keywords that are important to you). You can't
have too many links on your pages.

Links from other websites Some search engines place a very heavy
rating of importance on how many other sites in their index
have links to your website. Think of it for a second. If you
knew that a company was only linked to by one website, versus
a company that was linked to by a thousand websites, which
one would you consider more important? If you were a search
engine, you would surely try to link the more important ones
first.

This is where patience comes in again. It
can take some time to get a ton of links to your website.

Don't use frames Most search engines simply cannot index
a frames page. They get to your site and can't go anywhere.
Consider frames like a big 'GO AWAY' sign.

Don't try to fool the engines This is probably the biggest trap people
fall into. People come up with ways to 'fool' search engines,
and they work for a little while... sometimes. But then the
search engines catch on and penalize sites that use this practice.
Examples of this include, but are not limited to: repeating
keywords over and over; using invisible text (white text on
white background); using very small text to jam the keywords
in a small area.

Don't stuff the top your pages with data the engines can't
read. As with the last example, something
higher up in your page can be more important that something
further down. Therefore, HTML formatting, images, scripts,
etc. toward the top of your page can result in lower ratings.

Don't go Image Crazy We have all seen pages that are almost
all images. Usually they are the most visually intriguing
sites. After all, your artist can make beautiful screens that
display your content in the most eye-pleasing way. However,
the search engines don't have eyes. They don't see the beautifully
formatted text in your image. All they see is 'yourimage.jpg',
and 'yourimage.jpg' doesn't go far in terms of content and
relevancy.

Look at the competitionConsider everything you have read so
far and have a look at the people that have the top 20 positions
with the keywords that are important to you. Look at what
they are doing and what they are not doing.

Patience is a virtue We understand how difficult it can be
to sit and wait, but it can take many months before you achieve
desired results. Remember that you are competing with hundreds
of millions of other websites on the search engines, and patience
will prevail!